Many countries have stringent measures when it comes to dealing with crypto crimes including Japan. The latest incident is when crypto jacker was harshly convicted for infecting website visitors with malware.
The convicted crypto criminal installed a Coinhive miner on his website way back in 2017. It worked in such a way that he used his website visitors’ devices to mine his cryptocurrency, which is Monero. That is also known as cryptojacking.
This is not the first time that he is facing legal action. It dates back in march 2018 but he pleaded not guilty on claims that he was not warned prior. The high court did not agree with his claims.
According to local news outlet The Mainichi, he is still a convict as he did not warn the website visitors of the mining program or give them a choice to use it or not. It is still hard to verify how much he made from the proceeds.
Following the legal pursuits, Coinhive closed down last year. It also closed on claims of not being economically viable.
Coinhive as used for mining Monero (XMR), was a favorite of many at the time before it started having issues. Monero had a major drop in value in 2018 before getting a hard fork which made things even worse. That made the mining pursuits not favorable for Monero.
Cryptojacking requires a special kind of mining program that is used by attackers to do their criminal activities. The program can replicate the mining code to several websites at the same time.
According to reports, as of May 2018, there were over 300 websites that were infected. The sites had the Coinhive code such that when a visitor visits the website their device gets the malware.
CryptoJacking is a serious threat worldwide. Different places have different strategies for dealing with the menace. In southeast Asia for example, Interpol collaborated with a cybersecurity firm Trend Micro to reduce cryptojacking that affects MikroTik routers. MikroTik not only reduces cryptojacking but also cleans MikroTik routers that are infected with the malware.
With cryptojacking, it is more complicated to deal with as compared to other kinds of crypto crimes. It is hard to track down on an individual, plus scammers are always advancing their systems which makes it even more complicated.
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